Women's History Month 2019

6-16 March

Opening Night - 6 March 6-8:30 pm

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The Dundas Street Gallery

6 Dundas St., Edinburgh EH3 6HZ

Featuring a passionate group of artists from across the UK, Europe and South America, finding, linking and expressing the threads that connect us through our human experiences, gender, relationships, health, environment, country, culture, languages and more.

Diana Savova

“The Tree of Life” is my last painting from series of surrealistic fantasy works, where I use method of combining acrylic pouring technique with traditional painting. The light, the color and magic in the current moment are inspirations in my art. I find exciting to provoke the audience’s imagination to see a stories and to feel emotions, looking at the painting. This work is inspired by the beauty, excitement and happiness of motherhood and the love in general.

Eleanor Manners

Love Note to SelfYou are worthy of love whilst still finding the way to love yourself

How can you love me when I don’t love myself?Because we are in this togetherBecause while you are searching for healing it doesn’t stop you deserving to be loved exactly as you are.I am capable of loving a perfectly imperfect thing.How else would I have survived this world until now?

Julie Barnes

FragilityImportance of protecting ourselves against mental and emotional fragility in a chaotic world

Caroline Millar

'Tatters' explores the way in which a woman, who goes through the process of self-healing, can emerge with a powerful sensitivity. The complex layering of patched wounds makes her who she is - strong and resilient yet at times messy, fragile and vulnerable. Accompanied by the words :She threads her needlewith strands of love - weaves strength throughall her perfect flaws

Emma J H Louise

When Two Worlds CollideThis work casts a satirical eye over the patriarchal portrayal of LGBQT relationships within popular culture. There are a number of deliberate choices in imagery in this piece which I would choose to leave open to interpretation within the context of this.

Nicola Weir

I'm attracted to the potency in their delicate elusive nature. The symbolism that has endured through the ages, and the healing that they bring.With many layers of floral and medicinal qualities, their essence can literally comfort and heal. Their significance has been depicted from early times, and we are still trying to learn from the wisdom of ancient ways.

Severino Magri

Condizione umana (Human condition)Condizione umana represents social isolation, a painful condition from which is difficult to emerge with the positiveness that is essential to become part of a community.Personal sufferance that becomes social sufferance in times of cultural and economic crisis like the one we are living now.

Ali Meadows

Equal Pay Procession BannerThe patchwork motif is the broad arrow design. This was a pattern adopted by the original suffragette movement and used as a symbol by women who had been imprisoned. The colours purple and green were used by the suffragettes on their original banners. The high visibility industrial nylon made the banner stand out particularly well on the march.

Roberto Borra

Theme: "L’uomo del lago – Fuochi riflessi” (Man by the lake – Reflected flames) is that kind of connection between spiritual and physical Nature, elements that are common to all human beings. This artwork evokes atmospheres where the transitory passage of every man on Earth is bound to the warmth of emotions, drawn here as reflected flames immersed in the cold embrace of physical nature.

Denis Houlihan

HeraHera , a mythological Goddess overcame a myriad of demons , a female Machiavelli in a fantasy world of death & destruction .Fearless not flawless she emerges from the canvass. Proudly with determination and focus she faces the future .Hera today fights for equality , her struggles symbolised by the many layers of paint gouged into and removed from the canvas leaving behind their memories of hard fought victories .

Helen Campbell

Sea Shadow IIWe come from the earth, we will return to the earth, and our physical and emotional landscape is wired to change with the seasons. In our over-stimulated, hyper-connected world we barely hear the inconvenient whisper of intuition telling us to slow the pace and breathe. These paintings remind us to rest our busy heads and let the light in, to feel the breeze on the skin, the gritty sand and the shock of icy water beneath our feet.

C. Scott & A. Sim

Short Film ‘East West Hame’s Best’ is a short film by Carolyn Scott and Andy Sim documenting a group of women from different backgrounds and cultures (including the Philippines, Indonesia, Nepal and Bulgaria), all of whom are married to Scots and live in Fife. The film explores how learning alongside each other on a course ‘English for Speakers of Other Languages’ set up by the government in 2007, led the women to form an extremely strong friendship group.

Matteo Roetto

I Momenti TrasversaliThe painting symbolises, with shapes and colours, the obstacles and victories that a man encounters during his life. A generalised human condition made of choices, evolutions, failures and achievements during the cycle of life, where the first and the last step are on the same level.

Silvia Rege Cambrin

"At dawn the Point of Light emanates the energy of the Sun that removes every trace of darkness.The woman, symbol of Mother Earth, is lit up while she contemplates the light coming from the clouds. A wish of Harmony and Peace for our planet that welcomes Humanity during the journey called Life."

Kasia Ozga

Mirror-imageThe images come from silhouettes from my pregnancy in 2017. The repetitive forms and varied backgrounds in the series blur the lines between decoration and representation.

Whereas most of the thread in the image is affixed permanently to one part of the drawing, some threads are allowed to hang freely from the surface.

MaryAnne Hunt

All That's Left BehindReflection of the remains of a lost childhood.

Concetta Pillitteri

The theme is pollution and environmental imbalance resulted from current industrial and environmental policies that are devastating our planet. Putting an end to environmental exploitation is not only a matter for our governments but concerns also every one of us and is clear in this work where the man is in the eye of the storm.

Juliana Lauletta

Emanuele Tozzoli

In his gestures Emanuele tries to keep childhood alive to protract its creative power. His portraits, that can be erroneously mistaken for nightmares, are unusually modern, perhaps they are hidden archetypes of the unconscious’ beauty.

Mary Rouncefield

Campaign BootsThis piece was made to highlight the campaigns women have embarked on over the past century. These attempts to change society and to change the roles of men and women, should now be part of our cultural identity and shape the ways in which both men and women are perceived. These boots are covered with drawings illustrating a range of issues and campaigns which have been fought in the past, but sometimes forgotten in the present.

Barbara Rowell

Caldero ColoradoI like the idea that the ancient paractice of weaving tapestry has a vital contemporary role to emit the energy of peace. I am drawn to the inner space that opens up when I am working, and the positive effects this has on my overall well being. Creating this space for inner transformation is a key element of my art practice, where the process and the outcome are given equal weighting. I think it is for this reason that I am drawn to slow processes.

Cath Dunn

Layers DeepThis piece is inspired by high moorland and rough land. However it works at a number of levels beyond being a personal interpretation of the environment. The piece refers to the strata, geology and water that form the foundations of life on land. Metaphorically the piece also represents layers of consciousness, some dark, some full of light, some with strange and hidden objects that make up me as a woman.

Stefania Lubatti

Her artwork “Metanoia” represents the radical opportunity of changing the individual thought, facilitated by the circulation of ideas and philosophies in open minded societies.“Carruggi e zen” is a clear representation of how the Oriental philosophy enters the social and cultural fabric of the ancient alleys in Liguria, the Italian region where the artist lives.

Emeline Beroud

Two HeadsSo much connects us. So many systems surge to fill the space between people: language, body language, transport, technology, work, culture, thought. In spring 2016 however, I was living abroad, I felt that I was missing clear and honest information from those of whom I had high expectations. Despite all these threads trying to pull us together, we did not communicate, and with it came a confusing solitude and voicelessness.

Lorna Sinclair

The Escape RouteEscapism is a theme which continually influences my work. I believe a unifying factor for humans is the idea that we are constantly striving for a new reality or experience- curiosity and restlessness driving us, as well as our desire to escape our mundane environment. Hence, in this painting I've tried to illustrate this idea through creating a majestic landscape; the doorway promising an escape route to an exciting new reality for those who seek it.

Morag Young

FortitudeThe richness of my culture goes beyond the people. The ties of blood, the gaelic language, the strength of the family unit, the bond to the land, the tenets of faith, humour, famed hospitality and fortitude.This series of work is my emotional response to familiar memories from childhood.

The above work depicts a traditional, hardworking, crofter and fisherman.

Giulia Gellini

Threads in transformation, cobwebs that wrap, eyes that observe but beyond the surface, strong colours in their infinite stratifications to tell a true story, in constant flux without mediations or compromises, because Art can’t lie, in that harmonic pinnacle that is Life and belongs to everyone.Giulia took part to several solo and collective exhibitions in Italy and abroad with mentions, reviews and awards

Esperanza Perkins

Memories 7Crocheted cotton and pencil on Fabriano paper

Janette Macleod

Tree of WomanWoman through the ages ... Where is she now !

Lucy O'Donovan

This work shows the hands of the artist's mother - they are hugely important in the artist's life and she remembers them strongly from her childhood. The artist painted this canvas soon after she suffered a severe traumatic brain injury which involved coma, hospital and long term rehabilitation. Her mother sat by her bedside and taught her to read again, to write again, to speak again and walk again.

Naoko Takata

Element of Dance IIIDuring my life I have travelled to many places and experience many cultures, in all there cultures dance is used to communicate history beliefs and emotions. In the history of people dance has been used to express feelings thank to the gods for rain, sun and harvest, to attract the opposite sex and to celebrate phases of life. It was part of people's everyday life.

Esra Kizir Gokcen

Sail to Hope IWorld is becoming smaller than ever. As if even sailing by a paper boat to another land is possible. People are relocating, changing lives, for hope, for a better life... I used acrylics and collage and authentic symbols such as clouds to express the diversity in culture caused by immigration and used old maps in my collage to strengthen the theme.

Mariangela Redolfini

The element that links individuals is modern architecture, human hives where the squeezed space vertically organised suggest a conglomerate of single and various entities that survive in one ecosystem.

Sue Doyle

Holding it all together: a Township LadyA frequent visitor to the townships for our charities, Eyethu Careers Point and Friends of ECP, I've always been impressed by the women of the townships, who stride out with their babies on their backs and their shopping on their heads - no fuss, just managing it all, withough prams or even baby carriers.

Laura James

When my thoughts turn to ThreadWhen my Thoughts Turn to Thread quietly disrupts our preconceptions of stitch based art work, presenting a contrast between neatly stitched handwriting and a sad and sour message. Allowing the audience to consider and reflect on their own feelings and experiences.

Maisie Parker

ScrubbersI like to work in mixed print media; lino, screen and dry point etching. The piece Scrubbers is a screened background with lino prints collaged, on paper. It refers to the way women are often denigrated as scrubbers, when they are often having to work in menial jobs that involve scrubbing.

Kate Henderson

NurtureThe house symbolises the need to provide shelter from the elements, the maternal need to nurture and protect those inside. The texture, text and patterns on the glass reflects my daily life and routine as a mother and artist that ape the activities that converts a mere building into a home.

Shân Monteith-Mann

Cloud Island Kelp The twists and turns of life are depicted in the artwork showing beauty in the unravelled threads of sea kelp on a Scottish Island beach.

Lily Taylor

Symbolism and femininity have always seemed very intertwined to me. Thinking of inspiration for a series of work I started from a point that I know - my own femininity. Looking at what this means to me I could not get away from the idea of symbols. Eyes and their shape hold great significance to me, the veil eye, the third eye. Symbols of protection and enlistment. The shape of the eye itself holds a distinctly female outline.